basically fired without retirement benefits 160 african-american troops in texas. and senator took up the cause and was very loud protesting the way president roosevelt treated him. they were sort of sparked by a cartoon that was in the dinner program, which looking at that today is a pretty racist cartoon. they got into -- president roosevelt said i'm not waiting until 10:30. i want to give a speech now. he gave a speech ripping into senator foraker. he ended up responding. they ended up not serving all

the courses ort entertainment because it was so biting. because it was so ferocious, they ended up realizing they had to get rid of the off the record that year. people had to write about that. that's probably the single most surprising event of any dinner. >> george condon international dinner historian, thank you very much for being with us. >> surely. coming up, a hearing on diabetes research and funding efforts. medical professionals, diabetes patients testify before the senate aging committee. on thursday president obama will travel to new orleans to meet with residents who rebuilt their lives following hurricane katrina 10 years ago. he'll also deliver remarks. live coverage at 5:00 p.m. eastern. i'll also take your phone calls.

>> next, john dickey, the executive vice president of cumulus media talks about the future of radio by examining trends, digital technology and changing landscape of political talk shows. his remarks were part of a talkers magazine event in june. [ applause ] >> that you very much. i always take it very personally when people come to this event because it's really hard to get people to go anywhere these days. when you think about the level of quality, the quantitative nature of this crowd, i just say i can't believe it. 25 years ago we started talkers magazine. we made up the word talkers. it sounded novel. we had a newspaper called talkers. talkers, what an interesting word. now i see talker being used as

the generic name of a whole genre of performance. it's very satisfying. i can't begin to tell you how honored i am you're all here. i also have to admit talkers, even though it's 25 years old and this conference is 18 years old, it's a minute to minute deal. people laugh at me. i say this is the last time we're going to do this conference, we can't do it again. we're going to have to stop talkers because what do we represent. i don't want a publication about digital world, even though digit tal world is the thing we first foretold. we called this new media seminar 18 years ago. people said why are you calling it the new -- i said, because coming up in the next 20 years, radio's integration into the digital era is going to be the most important thing we deal with and it turned out to be true as evidence by look at the

obsession we have. back to us. there has to be this central hub called rooradio or there's no n for talkers. it's so widespread. i'm living on the age, this could be the last day. not to mention we're getting oerld. i savor these moments and especially this fireside session, even though the fire is covered. it's way too warm to have a fire. the idea of a fireside chat, an intimate, informal discussion between friends. and i would be presumptuous to say my guest is my friend, but i would like to hope someday he will be. i will tell you this. there would not be a conference today if it wasn't for john dickey. i was in a conversation with him, and it was actually the first time we ever met in person. i said to him, i don't know if

we can continue to do this conference. he looked at me and he said with the most serious look on his face, he said, you have to do this conference. i got chills. i'll never forget it. that's the only reason we're doing this conference this year. after last year we were so exhausted, so blown out. this is so hard to put together. i said to my wife bernadette when it was all over and went back to the room, i said this is the last time i am ever putting myself through this. then shortly thereafter i have this conversation with john dickey and he said you have to do this conference. that was so inspirational to me. this enterprise as all our enterprises do, as you get older you realize that. on a thread. every day you have to reinvent

yourself. i welcome this gentleman with a tremendous amount of gratitude in my heart for all he's done for me and all that he does as a lover of radio, who is one of the toughest jobs anybody could possibly imagine. let's see you do it. let's see you do what this guy does and what his brother does and what the people who are running these gigantic complicated businesses that is the sum result of river of time events that led to radio in the year 2015. let's see anybody do it. he's the executive vice president of cumulus media. he is in charge of their content and programming strategy and operations. he has a long pedigree in radio. he comes from a broadcasting family as does my son. he's a graduate of stanford university. he's brilliant and he loves radio. i love the fact i'm going to get to chat with him for the next half hour or so intimately in front of the fire of our minds, mr. john dickey. [ applause ] .

>> that felt good. >> we were standing in the back. it was standing room only. are you good? >> i'm good. >> i asked you a question in the meeting almost a year ago, how do you deal with the stress, running so many operations. i go crazy running a business, small business. we're a hand full of employees. you've got vice presidents, market managers, different formats. basically it comes down to the human element. >> it does. >> people think, who knows what goes on in the tower. i said, how do you -- you topped and looked at me and said it is stressful. could you tap into that for a moment, human-to-human.

how to you run an operation this big? >> well, i appreciate -- first of all, let me say, the remarks were very kind. i don't know if i'm responsible for the conference or not, but the way michael recalls it is accurate. i'm a big believer in conference. i think all industries that are healthy have a conference aspect to them. the fact this conference going away or sunsetting didn't set well to me. if i had anything to do with it, which i had a small part, i appreciate the kind remarks. we are all gifted to have somebody who is as passionate and devoted so much of their life to the format and the progress this for mat has made in the last 25 years. again, without turning this into a retirement party, because we want michael to be around for years to come, let's give him one more round of applause. [ applause ]

>> now, to the question of stress, i will say this off the record, even though nothing is off the record. what i do personally, hire mike mcveigh and kick him four times a day. mike, where are you back there? hu okay? he's sitting down. no, it is a stressful job. i know everybody has heard this old saying before, find something you love to do and you never work another day. i truly feel fortunate and blessed to be doing what i'm doing. i try to do the best job i can. it's a very difficult and sometimes thankless job. i try to approach it with a little bit of levity and a little bit of humility. maybe a lot more humility than most would. it's a tough job. stress like anything else, no matter if you're programming a radio station in topeka, kansas, where we have a great cluster of stations or in new york like craig is with 77, it's the same.

it eats you up if you don't deal with it. you've got to have outlets. i think it comes down to, and this will tie into sort of genius of that question, it ties into balance. balance in life. i've got a very great family. i'm very fortunate about that as well. great wife, three kids, one on the way. i started late. so that is a whole other fun thin for me. it's nice to have a balance. it's nice to come home. kids don't know what you do, who you are, they just know you're dad. they jump in your lap and make sure they keep dry cleaners in business and it's all good. i feel very fortunate that way. balance is important. i think part of what we'll talk about in this 30 minutes together is balance and conten. really the way forward in content. i'll let michael take the lead. >> before we get into that, one cannot ignore, one of the things

people were saying to me was one of the best panels they have seen at a convention, the way shawn just ran. i approach radio ratings, what i see is what i think. what i see is -- i'll ask it as a question, is it possible to ever accurately rate radio? >> well, i'm a recovering statistician. i studied statistics in school. it wasn't my area of passion. it was an area i was good at. my passion was history. i loved it, couldn't figure out how to make a lig out of it. to this day, still passion about it. statistics, days before on the research side, a consulting company 14, 15 years. richard harker, he was a great competitor in that field.

i knew mike mcveigh from those days and lots of other people in the room. but to the question, can you accurately measure consumption in radio, i think the thing that i would say are two points. one, shawn and i happen to agree on almost everything on that panel. some people would find that to be interesting and funny and iron in, because i think there's a perception that shawn and i don't agree oppose a lot of things. that's not true. we see eye to eye on that issue. i'll come from a different perspective. the other thing i would introduce to this debate and conversation is this. the ratings are an estimate. accuracy -- the answer to michael's question is, yes, the ratings are accurate. they are accurate to a point. what we don't talk about and what arbitron doesn't advance and neilson now as keeper of

arbitron doesn't advance, to what extent are they accurate. as we're on the eve of another political roller coaster, the first vote eight months away. we're going to be inundated with polsters and polls and one thing we will get from that other than headaches is a margin of error on each poll published. what we don't get out of neilson and arbitron is margins of error. i don't think i'll have too many hand popping up, anyone know how to figure out margin of error on person 25 to 54 average quarter hour share or rating in month of may in ppm market? anybody know how to figure that out. there's smart people -- i know john can go and figure it out. there's smart people that would figure out how to get the answer and do the math but what we're buying is a product we're

unfortunately representing as chapter and verse. the ad agencies to their advantage take it as chapter and verse. we unfortunately and probably unwittingly accept that. the first thing i would submit to everybody is, it's accurate but accurate to a point. if you don't know what that point is, you're paying for something you're misusing. i've been a staunch advocate of this for 13, 14 years. back in the days when i fired arbitron and brought neilson into radio for the first time, i don't remember, six, seven years ago in diary markets. so margin of error is important. we have two issues in this format. we have audience that is not accounted forks regardless of what we think and how flawed or not the methodology is, and we have margin of error, which is a going concern and has been pre. my opinion, back to the famous

quote in "a few good men" we can't handle the truth. the truth of the matter is the margin of error is a lot greater than what we want to acknowledge. furthermore, the truth of the matter is, solving for that margin of error costs a lot more money than we're willing to pay. i would almost take neilson's point of view if they would be honest about this and advance it this way and say, fine, we'll give you what you want. are you going to get your checkbook out? does it make sense? if the answer is, no, it doesn't make sense, we can't justify that. what we should do is work backwards from where it does make sense. that product i promise you is going to look different than the product we have today. that may not make a difference from neilson from a business perspective, as we have been informed, they make far more money with procter & gamble than they thought about with us, then you ask yourself, why do they care about us.

we are the missing piece to the puzzle to monetize and represent they have listeners from home to cash register. without us they don't have that story. i think they owe us more than what they are giving us. that could lead us into pitch forks and torches and we'd have to give john a head star. i'm not here to bash neilson, i'm just here to present the truth. the truth is we're out selling numbers that have a band on them that don't -- or a bracket that we don't represent. i was proponent of putting whoever on estimates. it's easy to do. put your mouse over a number and get margin of error. they can do this. they can build it in. they know they can do this. they don't want to do this. does it bother me? yeah, it bothers me. what bothers me is when people are misrepresenting the truth and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth.

we're paying a lot of money for this. what made it difficult, seven, eight years ago it's a rounding error, now it's our most meaningful expense behind payroll. okay. arbitron nielsen weren't supposed to be a tax, an administratiad administratiad additi additive. it's beening more apparent it's a tax. >> in toronto i had an opportunity to have a similar fireside chat with your brother lou. >> i'm sorry to hear that. >> it's going to be interesting to hear your answer to this question a year and a half later. he was extremely eloquent and detailed about the need for metrics in any kind of advertising sales. >> i prepped him for that

speech. >> we talked about different platforms selling on and agencies want metrics, they want numbers. yet throughout this room and throughout the industry, there are people that are selling outside the numbers. they call it nontraditional revenue. they call it qualitative. i see michael from kso is here. he sells in santa cruz, all kinds of interesting ways. he even says advertising isn't important anymore, selling products on the air, qualitative selling. does this fit into the cumulus philosophy at this point? >> it does. i would say, again, and this is the honest truth. i would say from us to i heart to cbs all the way down, none of us and i mean none of us do as good a job as we should selling the quality of the audiences we have. that's the reality of it. it's far easier to go sell rank and rating than it is to take an

audience and go out and talk about, as shawn said, what percent of my audience has got a disposable income that can actually do something with your product or service. if that were the case, we'd be having a conversation about relevancy of 3564. i know i'll see every hand when i say to everybody, wouldn't you like to be bonused and rewarded against 3564. can i get an amen? amen. the reality is then you have to sit across the table and look at a stooge like me and say can't do it, because our guys can't sell 3564, even though it's fair and the right thing to do. i would never tell you it isn't. persons 35-64 is where the vast majority of buys are placed against. then it cascades down to -- depends on the market, women -- persons 18-40, women 18-34, then goes down. do i think that's right?

no. increasingly as we have more millennials living on couches and not getting out and in a position to start their life until they get in late 20s and 30s, you would think madison avenue would wake up and people wake up and say, you know what, with school and wage stagnation and increased amount of pressure on incomes vis-a-vis taxes -- i sound like i'm running for office -- all these different things, you would think somebody would wake up and say, you're right. you're probably not in a position to go buy a second car, buy a jet ski, go to a nice dinner and buy a $50 bottle of wine or $80 bottle of wine,fuls you're in the absolute five standard deviations outside the norm, a whiz kid from silicon valley or hedge fund with no moral compass. that didn't sound right. any hedge fund people here? you've got to be in your 40s or

50s before you have anything jingling around. that ties into the conundrum, average age, take phil's word, late 50, 60 years of age. there's an old saying, don't fight city hall. we can't fight that fight. the good news is the demographics of the company are working to our favor. there are more people coming of age and waking up and finding, hey, i need readers. i can't see like i used to. hey, i just discovered am band, that's cool. i didn't know that was sitting out there. there are more people falling into that classification, this is great for us. the question is how do we get them and what are we going to do about it? >> i always find the argument your audience is dying off, you have to go for a younger audience to be illogical. does seventeen magazine become eighteen, nineteen, close high

schools when they finished twelfth grade. they are going to college. you just create program for new old people. there's a cyclical nature to life. you answered the question and basically the answer is this is the way it is. is not a matter of what's fair, it's the way it is on a deeper, moralistic level we can deal with it. the way it is. there are thousands of people whose lively hoods hang on this question, at least they would like to know because of the number of people that work at cumulus and the tremendous influence you have in the talk radio sphere. what is the position of talk radio at this point within the bigger cumulus plan? >> that's a great question. i would answer that first by saying you are correct. we have a very special responsibility in the format. by virtue of the stations and the markets those stations are

in that we are custodians of. that's how i view that responsibility. we are stakeholders an our company owns them. we own the license. let's face it, we are custodians of these great brands. as a custodian of a great brand and in a larger context of this format, we have a huge responsibility. i go to bed with that thought every night, among others, and wake up with it. back to stress, i don't know if it contributes to stress but it certainly keeps me grounded and contributes to the gravity and urgency that i approach this format and how we find a way forward in this format. so we are -- so part of the answer is that. the other part, and it relates to that, we are heavily invested in the format. we are not running from the format. we are not looking to get out of that format. we are deep in the format and are going deeper into the format. the real question is what

constitutes the format today. what does that format look and feel like. i'm back to branding. my brother and i ran a pretty successful market research company for a long time. lou, i don't give him enough accolades. he's a very smart guy. not as smart as me but he's really smart. he wrote the official book that was one of nab's best sellers for a long time called "the franchise." it was all about branding and taking the whole concept of branding which fortune 500 companies have been doing for years and applying it to radio. back when we were kids and getting into the business, bill was the king of research. everybody in this room protect had marketing on their book shelf. it was a samurai sword to have that. there was a lot of great parenting from bill and his

company. he was to radio what fred was and might still be to television. when we got out of school and in that space and looking at that strategic framework and how people approach radio, what didn't sit right to me, starting to fragment, individual attributes of a product were going to brand the product. meaning 10-0 radio station, hang my hat on and win by virtue of that. that only works until somebody does what, like the old baseball bat game, they become an 11 in a row radio station. none of that felt right to lou and i. when lou went back to school and got an mba at harvard he did study around branding and applying the art of branding to radio. therefore the book came out of it. today, which is very interesting, we talk about brands as if we always talked about brands. that wasn't the case. the warfare metaphor, sun tzu to

marketing warfare and recent was the strategic paradigm we lived off of until we changed that. and we changed it to the better. getting back to concept of branding and talk as we approached it. we've got to figure out what the brand is going forward. we understand the objective on reaching a younger audience or broader audience makes sense. when i say broader, i mean audience more inclusive demographically and psych graphically. they are selling niche format. don't take my word for it, take even what i said about margin of error, take a look at ratings in most markets. the stations that are really winning on the am side or am with fm deployed are all new stations or sports stations. i'll come back to that in a little bit. but talk -- purely talk and where the format sits, it's been in decline. so we've got to figure out what

that way forward is. michael's question to us, we are not afraid to admit we don't know exactly what that looks like, i don't know what it exactly looks like. i know the conversation has to be broader than what it is. i know from being fortunate enough to be around a lot of smart, interesting, different people at cocktail parties and dinner parties, i know what a good table feels like and i know what a bad table feels like. i know what people 35 years of age up to 55, 60 years of age. i know what they are talking about when they are sitting down, got a couple of belts in them and everybody having a good time. they talk about a lot of things. they talk about a lot of things. i can promise you sports is part of that. mike would agree with that. they talk about business. they talk about morality, they took about philosophy, i.e. religion, they talk about kids, they talk about politics. they talk about all kind of stuff. that tends to only be further

facilitated as wine bottles are ordered. so if we are going to be a reflection of those conversations as a format we need to start thinking about that. that doesn't mean -- i'm not taking an ideological position one way or the other i'm saying if we want a successful format moving forward, given the reality of where we find ourselves today, it's incumbent upon all of us to try different things, to broaden our horizons and to see what's out there and to look at our talent at a different way than we have in the past. >> i was thinking when you were saying, maybe we should just hire drunks. i remember when i was first breaking into radio. >> i'm going to get lotz of e-mails from madd now. >> when i was first breaking into radio i would look for jobs in magazines, drunks and drifters need not apply. why are they saying that.

drunks an drifters need not apply. that would be a good name for a book. it's interesting you mention sports, because, you know, we're all obsessed to sports. they say sports is the microcosm of life. to a certain degree it is. and we pulseate from generalism to specialty, pulls back. you see mccafes, mcdonald's is now starbucks. chicken places selling beef and beef places selling chicken. it's that constant pulsation going on from being a specialist and being a generalist. do you think general talk radio blew it by losing that great sports talk guy at 6:00 and gave up its franchise to become is own specialty so in the heart of qualitative, lucrative selling? >> hindsight is a wonderful thing, right?

i can answer that with a categorical yes, we blew it. that's the benefit of looking back and saying, you know, the wjrs of the world, the muddy voice of the great lakes with the tigers and j.p. mccarthy and all of this great talent and this wonderful place where people would meet on the radio and discuss all things important in greater detroit and the world and, you know, what have you. that was a wonderful position to be in. for some reason, and i think we all get how that works, something new happens. if something new is working, more of that is a good thing. we are all part of, you know, an entertainment ecosystem that is very formuladic driven. it's not a knock on our business, it's the reality of the business. it happens in film business, audio entertainment, it happens

in anything in life. it happens in the music business. if something is working, you get five or six artists and bands rolled out fast with the same sort of twist, if that's hitting on a sweet tooth, less keep going. yeah, i think blowing it probably -- i don't know if that's the right verb or characterization but we definitely missed an opportunity. i think back to what i was saying about the conversation at the dinner table, to me, figuring out the puzzle and trying to pick the lock on how we get back into healthy position format has to start with that. it has to start with the reality people talk about a lot of things and not just politics. politics is important. politic, by the way, offers a clue to what the way forward is. what's the old saying about politics, all politics are local. right? that's the other key, i think, to working our way out of this conundrum we're in. i think these radio stations have to get back to a balance. i think what shawn does is great. i think what rush does is great.

i think what allen does is great. there's some wonderful, we're in that business, syndicated programming and talent that deserves to be on these great radio stations anding be. it's a question of how much and what do we surround it with and how do we view our responsibility as programmers in the format versus how we used to do it. when things were working, it was easy to sit back. i'm fond of saying before google invented this or anybody else, we had the first sort of self-driven cars as a format. we would plug in all of the talent piped into us and sit back and watch magic happen, right in it was great. no problem. it worked. but that, like anything else, back to branding, it runs its course. it has run its course. it had a great run. it's had a great run. that run has come to an end through self-inflicted wounds and through the nature of brands and life cycles.

it's incumbent, thinking about finding our way forward, ask ourselves how much of the solution is premised on being more local. how much premised on how to showcase these great syndicated talents like shawn in an environment that allow them to shi shine, houchl premised widening the appeture and saying we're not going to talk about a, b, c? i don't think so. if you're stacking the tables successfully at a party, you're bringing all that to the table. you're bringing a savant, somebody crazy this way and that way, bringing all kinds of talent to the table. through the miracle of alcohol, you're letting it all sort of come out. take your watches off. somebody famous said the ultimate insult is wearing a watch to a dinner party.

it doesn't matter what time it is. we're having a good time. that's what we wouldn't to be like again. we want that instruct you're, within format and context, i get that. this isn't free flow. i think we need to start broadening out more from that perspective. it takes courage to do that. you're going to throw -- we have a cooking analogy, you're going to throw noodles against the back of the stove and they aren't all going to stick. you're going to try things and it's not going to work. you need management support and ownership support. everybody has to realize we have to try some things differently or we're not going to move forward and figure out the way forward. >> okay. i have a couple more questions and then we will move on obviously. i was going to ask you about local and national but you answered it in your answer to the other question. let's talk about the balance of talk and music. most of the stars in radio are on the talk side. the radio star is usually a

talker. there are some big stars in music radio. most are syndicated and produced. they are very -- they are not live and natural and organic. they are kind of plastic. is there any future for the d.j. again in radio or is that good-bye? it does relate to people in talk radio. i view all radio as radio. as a matter of fact we didn't blow it because we're sports talk, too, it's just balance as you said. what's going to happen with music radio in terms of people talking? is that over or is it just a temporary drought? >> he's asking me some really tough questions. i don't think it's over. i don't think that's over. i think back to the tail end of my last answer. i think all of us have a responsibility to go out and try to do it differently, bring talent in. our biggest selling opposition across all format is the reach of our medium.

that's the one thing that we can positively say that ppm has done for us is it's gone -- we don't talk about that anymore. i remember the pitch back when everybody was talking about changing the methodology and going into this form of measurement. the pitch was all about it was going to make radio easier, open up more dollars and there will be a cost per point reset. i looked at pierre and say that's great but i didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. that's all a bunch of what? the reality is we'll probably never quantify this or sell it, you've got to go out and lead with it's going to give usa better opportunity to demonstrate the expansive reach of radio, and it has. you've seen cums in new york approach 5 million. it's huge, it's crazy. back to talent. i think any informed talent -- we have to continue to push this

agenda, looks at radio and broadcast, no such thing as terrestrial radio, borrowed cast tv and broadcast radio. you look at the vast reach. if you're gift of the gab type of man or woman you want to get into the panel and want to be a brand like mike was discussing prior to the panel, where else would you go? this is the place to blow up as a brand. i think our primacy in that regard hasn't changed. only advantaged under ppm and where i sit today. the story i take out repeatedly to talent as much as i can is exactly that. if you are trying to build a brand, and you're trying to become a nationally known person or figure, there's no better place to do that than on the radio. back to what michael said earlier, i don't think there's a programmer in here that would